Goldsmiths MA degree show 2010: a quick dip

Image: Goldsmiths' swimming baths, work/exhibition spaces for MFA students. Photo copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2010.

The famous swimming baths at Goldsmiths were the setting for the annual degree show in June 2010 (as well as the stylish undergraduate tower). As always there's a lot to see, and I never made it to the smaller swimming bath (former swimming bath, I should say - there's no water except in Joey Holder's fishtank installation). What follows is a selection of some of the work I enjoyed, found challenging or inspiring.

Noam Enbar, installation

Noam Enbar, animation

Ji-Yen Lee, video installation

Ji-Yen Lee, photographic collage

Ji-Yen Lee, photographic collage

Hee Seung Sung, painting

Hee Seung Sung, painting (detail)

Hee Seung Sung, painting (detail)

Olivia Lori, photograph on textile

Olivia Lori, photograph on textile

Olivia Lori, photograph on textile

Olivia Lori, photograph on textile

Olivia Lori, photograph on textile

Jinhee Park, installation

Jinhee Park, installation

Jinhee Park, installation

Jinhee Park, installation

Pedro Lasch, painting

Pedro Lasch, painting

Elena Damiani, photographic collage

Elena Damiani, photographic collage

Elena Damiani, photographic collage

Elena Damiani, photographic book

Birgit Renate Deubner, photograph

Thomas Johnson, installation

Joey Holder, installation

Joey Holder, painting

Teng Chu Chun, installation

Rowena Harris, sculpture

Amir Chasson, painting

Iva Kontic, video installation

Kiwoun Shin, video

Maria José Argenzio, slide projection

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Aberystwyth University School of Art MA Show Opening

Chatting by Philippa Sibert's installation, 'Aloft: 300 Birds 300 Steps 6000 Miles'.

Photographs copyright Margaret Sharrow 2009

Last night's opening of the second Aberystwyth University School of Art MA show was both challenging and well-attended.

Quite frankly, I was overwhelmed by the crush just getting to the north room to see Philippa Sibert's excellent installation and Diane Heeks' latest developments in what I may have to, for the time being, call three dimensional abstract painting, hovering in a very interesting place somewhere between painting and sculpture.

As for getting into Ffion Nolwenn Roberts' installation of pinhole photography, I could only lift the black curtain on the door to be confronted by the woman attempting to enter ahead of me stepping back out, proclaiming, 'It's full.'

As Alice Farnworth, another student exhibiting pinhole photography (but not as we know it, Jim - on a massive scale!) said, 'I was afraid the crowd would be rather thin tonight, but I'm delighted by how many people have turned out.'

Here, here.

Note: all the photographs shown here were taken at the end of the evening, when, the wine having long since run out, there was finally room to swing a cat, or at least a compact digital camera.

Other work shown by Sebastian Gray, Chris Iliff, Colin John Leythorne, and Clare Rose, and will be described along with the others in due course, when I've had a chance to see the exhibition without all the people.

Exhibition continues until 9 October, Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm.

Directions to the School of Art

Official School of Art MA exhibition webpage

Alice Farnworth: through the pinhole

Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2008

It's easy to forget if you are an undergraduate, but we do have postgraduate students at the Aberystwyth University School of Art. These people are most often found squirrelled away down the overheated M.A. corridor, with its walls of steam pipes and mysterious sliding green doors. Even more mysterious are the Ph.D. students, their painting spaces in a secretive annexe that for a long time I had assumed was a storage area for boards. But these postgraduate creatures are, like the faeries and woodsprites, in our midst, if generally unacknowledged. They may be the friendly helpful Technician who just cut your copper plate or sorted out your Photoshop disaster. They may have been sitting in at your January assessment. A few might even have a workspace near you, in the otherwise undergraduate studios. Alice Farnworth is one such M.A. photography student. Not only does she not bite, she produces interesting work.


Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2008

Using pinhole photography, she has been producing an extended series of self-portraits with an element of the mysterious. In particular, she has been exploring the use of mirrors to produce double self portraits. These doppelganger images are, at their best, unsettling, because they do not seem to represent the old trope of woman-regarding-herself-in-mirror. Instead they seem to suggest a second self, an inner self, a secret sharer, an unwanted alternate self crawling from the subconscious.


Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2008

On a practical level, it is interesting to note that she says that her friends claim always to be able to tell which image is 'really her' and which is the reflection. A task that may prove more difficult as her sister apparently closely resembles her - yes, she has tried double familial portraits but found them less satisfying.

Every time I see her (or check the clotheslines outside the darkroom where prints dry) she seems to have produced another set of 6-8 images from another self-sitting. 'I'm looking for the one image in the series that stands out, that says something different,' she says. One day I found her fretting about a set of pictures where she discovered that a reminder to herself that she had written on her hand was clearly visible in the prints. Bizarre, indeed. That, I thought, is your different image.


William Blake, The Soul Hovering over the Body Reluctantly Parting with Life circa 1805, Tate Collection

Last week's offering produced an outstanding series of the double portraits suggestive of the soul leaving the body, reminiscent of an image of this produced by William Blake. I'm still waiting for a copy of one of this new series to post here. Do check back to this page - it's worth waiting for.

And here it is!


Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2009

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